Mexico now ready to welcome private lithium miners

Chief Executive Fabio Schvartsman said Vale would halt operations using those dams and spend 5 billion reais ($1.3 billion) to decommission them.

Bolsonaro and his cabinet are swiftly dialing back promises of deregulation.

The International Coalition of Large Dams (ICOLD) group "is recommending that dams, especially large dams, be built by dam professionals.

Two other engineers, who worked for Germany’s TUEV SUED on a contract where they attested to the safety of the Vale dam, were arrested in Sao Paulo.

"Negotiations may or may not continue," the company said in statement.

On Saturday TUEV SUED told Reuters it had not found the dam to be damaged when it was inspected last September.

Aura states that an 865,000 tonne inferred ore zone grading 119 g/t silver and a 3.3 million tonne inferred ore zone averaging 0.51 g/t gold has been outlined by 14 drill holes at the project.

“Before pointing out fingers we need to see what happened first”

"The fact is that Vale's share drop was even steeper than some market participants expected"